The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
by Elyn R. Saks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elyn R. SaksEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-08-14
ISBN: 140130138X
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Book Reviews of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
Book Review: A Deeply Moving Memoir of Schizophrenia
Summary: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Deb Gross
on 07/13/2008
Elyn Saks attended Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, graduated Yale Law School, and is now a chaired professor of law at the University of Southern California. Saks also suffers from schizophrenia. THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD is a deeply moving story of Saks's struggle to live a full life while dealing with the trials of a chronic mental illness.
Saks employs evocative prose throughout her memoir to bring the reader into her state of mind when the disease breaks through her defenses. Her description of the onset of her symptoms at the age of eight resonates: "I think I am dissolving. I feel - my mind feels - like a sand castle with all the sand sliding away in the receding surf."
A recurring theme in THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD is the author's love-hate relationship with the medication that keeps her functional but leaves her less than her "authentic self". She also does an outstanding job of laying out the prejudices those with mental illness face, particularly when seeking treatment for physical ailments.
THE CENTER CAN NOT HOLD is an inspiring story of a woman who fought the demons of her mind and the prejudices of society to achieve great personal and professional success.
4.5 Books
Summary of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
Elyn Saks is a success by any measure: she's an endowed professor at the prestigious University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has managed to achieve this in spite of being diagnosed as schizophrenic and given a "grave" prognosis -- and suffering the effects of her illness throughout her life.Saks was only eight, and living an otherwise idyllic childhood in sunny 1960s Miami, when her first symptoms appeared in the form of obsessions and night terrors. But it was not until she reached Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar that her first full-blown episode, complete with voices in her head and terrifying suicidal fantasies, forced her into a psychiatric hospital.Saks would later attend Yale Law School where one night, during her first term, she had a breakdown that left her singing on the roof of the law school library at midnight. She was taken to the emergency room, force-fed antipsychotic medication, and tied hand-and-foot to the cold metal of a hospital bed. She spent the next five months in a psychiatric ward.So began Saks's long war with her own internal demons and the equally powerful forces of stigma. Today she is a chaired professor of law who researches and writes about the rights of the mentally ill. She is married to a wonderful man.In The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks discusses frankly and movingly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, and the voices in her head insisting she do terrible things, as well as the many obstacles she overcame to become the woman she is today. It is destined to become a classic in the genre.General Books
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